Heather Song (10 page)

W
e reached the A98. Alasdair turned east onto the main road and quickly sped up. In three or four minutes we were through Crannoch and again racing along.

Three miles out of town Alasdair slowed, then turned off the road and wound his way along several single-track lanes through cultivated fields. We stopped at last where the road ended at what was called the Mains of Findlater. Immediately Ranald was out of the car and half running, half walking in the rain toward the muddy path through ripening barley, now under more than an inch of water, that led to the promontory overlooking Findlater Castle.

Alasdair glanced back at me with a look of question.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” I said, “but I’m going after him.”

Alasdair opened the door and began to get out.

“Why don’t you stay here and keep the car running and warm,” I said. “You’re not dressed for it. At least I’ve got on hiking boots.”

“Be careful, then…both of you,” said Alasdair as I got out. “That cliff is treacherous in the best of conditions!”

I nodded, then shut the door and hurried after Ranald. The wind whipped my coat and hair into such a frenzy it was all I could do to keep him in my sights. I hadn’t even bothered with my hat. The rain was slashing down at a forty-five-degree angle straight into my face. I sloshed along, trying to run, but the footing was so difficult in the mud it was all I could do to keep to my feet as I stumbled forward.

It was probably two hundred yards from where we had parked to the overlook. Ranald was halfway there by now. He had the footing of a Highland goat!

I kept wiping my face, but my hair and nose and ears and fingertips were dripping as though I were standing in a shower. Ranald’s hat blew off his head and came flying toward me.

As I drew nearer the promontory ahead, I could faintly make out through the frenzy of mist and rain a second figure standing overlooking the wild, turbulent sea. I recognized Alicia.

By the time I was close enough to see clearly, Ranald had stopped and was standing about ten feet from the ledge. I hurried to his side. I heard his voice faintly in spite of the wind. I knew he was praying.

The moment he saw me beside him, he began to inch forward again. I followed his lead until we were both about five feet from her back. He glanced toward me and gave a nod.

“Alicia,” I said. “Alicia, it’s Marie. I’ve come to take you home.”

For a moment nothing happened. The rain and wind whipped and lashed at us. For the first time I saw how dangerous the situation truly was. Beneath our feet lay muck and mud. Alicia stood at the very edge. The footing was treacherous. The sea below was a frenzied cauldron of gray and white. The wind howled and moaned among the rocks and along the cliff face and through the ruins of Findlater Castle down in front of us.

At last Alicia’s head began to turn…slowly, almost mechanically, as if she were being maneuvered by something outside herself. Her face came into view, deathly white and drawn, her eyes wild, almost vacant. The moment she saw Ranald, her features suddenly came to life.

“What is
he
doing here?” she said in a low, almost growling voice.

“He has come to help you, Alicia,” I said. “He came with me to take you home where you will be warm and safe.”

“Help me…
help
me!” she spat with derision. “The old fool—he is the reason for the curse.”

“We can talk about all that later, Alicia. Don’t you want to go home and put on some warm clothes?”

“Not with
him
!” she snarled. “That’s why I came, to get
away
from him, to get away from the madness that follows him. This is where I will be safe…safe from him…safe at Findlater’s face.”

I shuddered to hear her talk so.

“He was Winny’s father,” she went on in the strange voice. “He killed her, just like he wants to kill me if he can get his hands on me. It is his curse; he is mad. He is crazy. Get back…keep him away from me! ‘
His evil will betray, keep him away
.’”

“Please, Alicia,” I said, “won’t you come with me?”

I reached out a hand and took a step toward her.

“Get away. Get back I say!” she shrieked. “Olivia warned me about you. She warned me about everyone who is under the curse, that you would trick me, that you would lie to me, that I must get away…that I would only be safe here…with Olivia…safe where she could protect me.”

“Alicia, please…wouldn’t you like to come home and—”

Suddenly she cocked her head and looked at me with a strangely different expression.

“Who are you?!” she said, a wild look in her eye. “I don’t know you. What do you have to do with
him
? Whoever you are, you ought to get away, too.”

“Alicia,” I began, taking another step forward.

“Stop!” she cried, stumbling back.

Her foot slipped in the mud. In a flash Ranald lunged past me with outstretched hand.

Alicia screamed as her feet gave way. Luckily the onshore gale blew her forward. Had Ranald’s two hands not seized her flailing wrists in two viselike grips, she would have slid over and been gone. He flopped to his chest and held her arms for dear life.

“Marie!” cried Ranald. “Grab haud o’ my ankles!”

I fell to my knees and clutched his trouser legs.

“Pull, Marie…Haud us frae slippin’ o’er the edge!”

Ranald wriggled his way backward as I pulled with all my might. But in the mud, and clinging to the weight of Alicia’s body half sprawled over the cliff face, all he could do was slip and slide about. Alicia was crying out in terror, yet somehow Ranald managed to keep hold of her wet wrists.

Between the two of us, we gradually inched her legs up and over, then pulled her a few inches away from the precipice. Feeling the ground beneath her legs again, Alicia stopped struggling. As she did, all the life seemed to drain out of her.

I helped Ranald to his feet. He stooped and lifted Alicia into his arms and we began making our way back to the car. Mud hanging from them both, Alicia drooped like a rag doll in Ranald’s arms.

We reached the car. Alasdair jumped out and ran to us.

He and Ranald managed to get Alicia into the backseat. I scooted in next to her and wrapped my arms tightly around her. All three of us were soaked and muddy, but no one was thinking about the leather seats now. Alicia was a solid block of ice. Had I not heard her speak, I would have assumed her already dead for hours. Whether she was dead now, that I didn’t know.

“Drive, Duke,” said Ranald urgently. “The puir lassie’s life is hangin’ by a thread!”

W
e arrived back at Castle Buchan in eight or ten minutes. Alicia had not moved a hair. Cold and soaking myself, there wasn’t much I could do for her other than gently rub her arms and shoulders and try to stimulate a little circulation.

The rain was still coming down in a torrent as we pulled up. I jumped out and ran toward the door, Alasdair followed with Alicia in his arms and Ranald at his side. We hurried upstairs to her rooms, where Alasdair deposited Alicia on the floor of her bathroom then left me.

She was completely limp. It took me ten minutes to get the clinging muddy clothes off her and tossed into the tub. What she needed was a shower, but that would have to wait. I cleaned the mud from her hands and arms as best I could with a washcloth and towel, and dabbed at the splotches on her face, then got her mostly dry and somehow managed to get a robe around her. Then I opened the door to where Alasdair was waiting.

He came in and lifted Alicia and carried her to her bed. I wrapped a clean towel about her hair as he laid her down and we covered her with blankets.

“She’s safe now,” sighed Alasdair. “I hope she comes out of it.”

“What do you think? Is she…will she recover?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Hypothermia wouldn’t surprise me, though I don’t actually think it’s cold enough to kill her in that short a time. She has obviously fainted from more than mere exhaustion. Every inch of her is chilled. Hypothermia at some level would have overcome her soon.”

“I wonder how long she had been out there.”

“A long time, I imagine. If she walked from here, that’s five or six miles in the rain. She could have been out in it as long as you were up the Bin.”

“I’ll sit by her until she warms up and seems to be sleeping. Right now she’s just lying here unconscious.”

“That’s probably good—I’ll bring some water bottles and heating pads to put in the bed with her.”

Alasdair returned a few minutes later. We positioned the warm bottles and pads against Alicia’s back and feet, then he left me alone with her.

I sat for twenty or thirty minutes. There was no change. Not a muscle moved. But as I held Alicia’s hand in mine, I thought I imagined it becoming warmer. It may have only been the heat of my own hand, but I was hopeful.

I gently pulled my hand away and tiptoed from the room, then hurried down to my studio. I picked up
Journey
and carried it back to Alicia’s room. Alasdair could have done it for me, but I assumed he was by now probably driving Ranald home. I managed to get the harp to Alicia’s room and set it down at her bedside.

I brought over a chair from her writing table, drew in a deep breath, then closed my eyes. I knew of the harp’s unique and wonderful capacity to soothe and bring healing. Many musicians use their gifts and instruments in hospitals and care homes with amazing results. I had seen enough to know that any music—and the mystical heavenly tones of the harp most of all—was capable of transcending the conscious mind and penetrating deep into the soul, there to vibrate with the most elemental rhythms of God’s life, stirring and waking, giving hope to the hopeless, opening doors in the hardest of hearts, reviving memories, causing the despondent to smile, bringing courage in the face of death, uniting estranged hearts, even reversing disease itself. The power of the body to live, to revive, to hope, to heal, was deeper than medical research could often explain. It seemed there were times that the vibrations of a harp’s strings acted invisibly as a musical electrical impulse to stimulate those deep, miraculous life-giving forces and powers within the body into renewed activity in ways no treatment of science could equal nor measurement of medicine account for. I had read cases of coma patients coming suddenly awake, of heart irregularities becoming regular, but more often of the music helping to calm people who were agitated…just as when David played for King Saul.

Now it was my own friend lying unconscious in front of me.

Oh, God
, I breathed,
I am so small and weak and unknowing, but you know what is taking place in Alicia’s mind and body. You made her. You are there with her at this moment. Your Spirit is the life within her. You know what she needs. Please, God, guide my fingers to make your music. Bring Alicia awake. Warm her body with your care and love. Heal her hurts and wounds of soul and whatever torments of mind drove her out there. Make her whole…and bring her peace.

My prayers stopped. I set my fingers to the strings and, as softly as I was able, began to play.

Phrases from one song or another flowed randomly, here a line from a hymn, now a refrain from a Scottish ballad. Gradually I found “Gwendolyn’s Song” filling the room with its mysterious melody that I never could seem to get exactly as I remembered it from the fingers of Alasdair’s daughter.

Undefined sensations that something was at hand flowed through me as I played, as if I were playing with a great orchestra, playing in some majestic symphony with a thousand instruments and a thousand more voices raised in song. Yet I was able to hear only my own single part in what were enormously complex harmonies swirling about just beyond the range of my hearing. To me was given only my own sheet of music to play and to hear, not the entire score. That I could not hear the other voices and instruments, however, made my participation with them no less vital or real. Gradually as I played, almost as if I were following the guidance of an invisible master composer standing before a vast orchestra, the music from my harp began to change. A melody began to emerge from its strings that I had never heard before. It was majestic and happy, yet, like all Scottish music, set in melancholy tones. Its tune took me deep into the Highlands on a warm August afternoon. All around spread a blanket of luxuriant purple heather stretching in every direction, into the glens and along trickling streambeds and to the highest peaks. Everywhere was heather! It gave off a balm of light and warmth and healing. And over all spread the mysterious sounds of the music, from the tune that had no name.

I continued to play, and the melody went on and on, in new directions that I followed as they came. I knew even as I played that I would never hear them again in the same form. Something almost like Gwendolyn’s own playing had come upon me. I played as one being moved by an invisible hand who knew the song and was guiding me through it, even though I did not.

How long I played, I cannot say. Time loses its temporal frame of reference when the music of the spheres takes you over.

However long it may have been, I became aware that my fingers were slowing. My harp was in the process of growing silent again.

At last, with reluctance, I admit, but knowing I must obey the inner impulse of the score even when an extended rest appeared on the page, I withdrew my fingers and the strings quivered away faintly into stillness.

I glanced toward the bed.

As the final harmonies of heavenly vibration evaporated into silence as if in response to the strings’ dying sounds, I saw Alicia’s eyelids twitch imperceptibly.

After a moment her eyes began to flutter. Slowly they opened.

She stared out for several seconds, seemingly unseeing, then gradually her vision came into focus. She appeared surprised to see me.

“Mrs. Reidhaven…,” she said in the softest voice imaginable. It sounded odd for her to use such a formal expression, but I let it go. “What are you doing here…What am I doing in bed?”

“You were very cold,” I said. “You were caught in the rain. We brought you back and put you to bed.”

“I seem to remember going for a walk. That’s right, it began to rain…Yes, it was very cold.”

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

“I am still cold. But the bed is cozy, and…”

She paused and a strange light came into her eye.

“What is it, Alicia?” I said.

“I had the most wonderful dream,” she said wistfully. “At least I think it was a dream. It must have been since I am lying in bed. But it seemed that I was somewhere else, that I had gone to another world. Wherever it was, it was like this one yet also very different. Would you like to hear the dream?”

“Yes, I would…very much.”

“I was on a walk, just like I really was,” Alicia began. “I don’t know what made me go out. Something had frightened me, I think, but I cannot remember what. I was trying to get away, to get somewhere safe. Someone told me I would be safe if I got there, but I cannot remember where. It was a long way.”

She spoke softly from the bed, almost as if she were still half asleep.

“Then it began to rain…very hard, but I kept going. It did not occur to me how foolish I was for going out without a coat or hat or umbrella when the sky was so blustery and black. But that’s how dreams are. I was not thinking very well. It was a long way to where I was going, but I had to get there. It was the only place to be safe and escape the fear. But when I got there it wasn’t safe. It was even more terrifying than what had frightened me. I was cold…very cold. I didn’t know what to do. I was paralyzed between the two fears. I remember standing in the rain, the cold, cold rain…standing for what seemed hours and hours…so cold I could feel nothing at all.

“Then I heard voices—strange and confusing voices. I could not understand what they were telling me. I was too cold to think, too cold to understand. By then I was not walking anymore, only standing in the cold. I seem to remember falling, or maybe falling asleep for a time. Then the rain stopped, and slowly the confusing voices faded. I was walking again. But everything had changed. There was no more rain or wind or cold…I was walking with heather at my feet. I was happy, like a child in a snowfall. I was happy to be in the midst of so many tiny blossoms around me as far as I could see in every direction. The most wonderfully exquisite aroma filled the air. I know heather has little smell, but in my dream it gave off the most intoxicating perfume of roses and violets and carnations and gardenias.

“Then gradually as I walked I became aware that the perfume was coming from the faint sound of music in the distance. I know music has no more fragrance than heather. But in a dream all your senses mix together. And in mine as the music filled my head, so, too, did a fragrance of peace and healing and warmth. I was no longer cold…and the music made whatever I had been afraid of disappear. I kept walking, but instead of trying to escape the fear behind me, I was trying to get closer to the music. I was barefoot I think. I was walking through fields of heather. But instead of scratchy prickles, it was cushiony and soft, like fluffs of cotton beneath my feet. Maybe I was walking on
clouds
of heather and that’s why it was so soft. Maybe I was dead and in heaven and having a vision—”

Alicia stopped and turned her head toward me.

“
Do
you think I was dead, Mrs. Reidhaven?” she asked in a childlike voice that contained no hint of anxiety. “I feel very strange, as if something that has been inside me for a very long time, for years and years, is gone. I feel different than I ever felt before.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know…I cannot describe it. I think it feels good. But I cannot be quite sure—it is too new.”

“I do not think you were dead, Alicia,” I said. “I have been with you for some time, and you did not look dead. You were cold, but breathing.”

“Well, no matter…Maybe I was half dead, if that is possible. Wherever I was, I kept walking on the fluffy heather clouds, and the music gradually became louder and louder. Then I came over the top of a hill and suddenly saw spread out in front of me beyond a little glen a huge orchestra on one side of the opposite slope. There were so many instruments that they extended up the slopes of a great hillside as far as it was possible to see. There must have been a thousand or more…maybe ten thousand. Never could such an orchestra be imagined! And opposite them was a vast choir, just as huge. They were all playing and singing together the most beautiful song that anyone has ever heard. It was like a song that could only have been composed in heaven. No one but the angels, or maybe God himself, could think up such a wonderful song. Maybe that’s why I thought I was dead. And though there were so many instruments and people, the music was soft and resonant, full to overflowing with something different than loudness…It was full with quiet resonance. It was music that went into me through my heart, not my ears.

“At the very top of the hill stood the conductor of the vast throng, conducting softly, gently, with tiny movements. To the conductor’s right sat the largest section of instruments of all—a hundred harps of every conceivable size and shape and color and kind of wood. There were harps as huge as buildings and tiny harps no larger than a violin. Some were tall and thin, some wide and stout…black, white, natural wood of all shades of brown and tan. There might have been two hundred…or a thousand harps; from where I stood I could not tell. And over the whole orchestra they spread their lovely tones of peace. Now that I remember it, I think the perfume of the music was coming from the harps, each of the harps a different flower in a vast, fragrant music-garden.

“I stopped and stood listening…just listening. No, it wasn’t
listening
, exactly, because it would all have been no different even if I had been deaf. I would have heard the music just the same. I stood
absorbing
the music, with all my senses absorbing the sight and sound and magical perfume of the music. As I did, I felt life and strength welling up inside me. I felt strong and happy and free and full of peace.

“As I stood, I saw the conductor step down and walk down the hill between the orchestra to the right and the choir to the left. The music continued as she descended and gradually came toward me, and then I saw that the conductor was a woman. Or perhaps a girl…or an old lady…I could not tell which. Age meant no more there than music you could smell and heather that felt like clouds of cotton beneath the feet.
Everything
was different there.